A nice end to the week

Well after the stress of Thursday, yesterday actually went really well.

It's the end of the month, and so time for another round of walk'n'talk one2one's with my team.  I really enjoy these walks and discussions with the guys that work in my team.  It gives a chance to give good feedback to them - and get there thoughts and idea's.

This month was even better as we have some projects that are due to start soon - which meant that we could have the discussions about who will do which projects, and how we are going to tackle them.  That and discussions about the R&D projects that I am trying to push my team to do took up all of the discussions today.

What I hadn't counted on though was my choosing the wrong footwear...  I was in my all black outfit yesterday and I normally wear either white trainers (Mrs Stace hates the idea of white trainers with black, but I like the contrast that they provide) or my cowboy boots (that Mrs Stace hates on principle :p).  I went with the boots yesterday, and regretted it after the first walk as the pain started to climb in my feet.

You see you can't get cowboy boots easily in smaller sizes, and so my boots are somewhere between 1 or two sizes too big for me, stuffed with insoles to try and take up the extra room.  But my feet still slip in the boots and after the first loop (2.2KM's) they started to hurt.

Halfway through the second I was worried about blisters starting on the balls of my feet, I've had these the before and I really do think that they are about the worst blisters I have had - on the heels they hurt, but right at the front of the foot it's just awful.

At the end of the third loop I tried to make sure that I was just tried and hide behind my desk for a while to let my feet recover.

Then in the afternoon I had a meeting with ICT to discuss the new way that we are going to set up infrastructure for developers.  Now I normally have an issue with ICT (they were the people that sent me into a tail spin on Thursday) and so I was not really looking forward to the meeting. But...  I have to say it went really well, we were bouncing idea's (and hopefully one idea I had solved an issue I have with the new infrastructure and if they take it up would also make their life easier.  Basically the idea is to move to a VDI environment - where all of the developers have a virtualised desktop stored on a server, rather than having hardware under their desk.  The discussion on how this works put a few of my fears to ground (though I want to see it in action before I am completely convinced).

Whilst I can see it working well for those who only need a desktop, I work from home, on the train and would like a laptop.  Using a server based machine for this is not what I want to do - I don't want to have to be connected to the office in order to work - and so I was against it for those who need to work in the same way as I do.  However, yesterday I was reading a techy web site that discussed desktop caching - having a server based computer, but when you disconnect from the network there is a local version of the machine that allows it all to work seamlessly, without a connection.  Fingers crossed...

We have a demonstration coming up soon, hopefully I'll get to see it working flawlessly and I can put the rest of my fears to rest and try and convince the other developers that it is going to work.  If it doesn't work flawlessly then I don't want to think about how I have to proceed...

And finally, a friend came back to the office after a 4 week vacation and we had a really good natter and catch up just before he left.  He knows, and was asking how it's going, and if I have any issues that he can help with.  Apparently I also have a present coming from Mexico when his wife returns.  he wouldn't say what it was and knowing his sense of humour the mind boggles :)  I don't know whether to be exited or nervous :p

It was a nice end to the day though, and a great end to the week.  Now to see if I can relax over the weekend (I have to finish building the radio control car for my niece - it's almost working, I just need to find all of the screws and clips to make sure it does not fall apart on her)

Have a good weekend all :)